Boehner-McDermott feud reawakened by anti-Obama lawsuit

House Speaker John Boehner is a litigious guy when he’s seeing orange.

In the first-ever occasion when one member of Congress took another to court, Boehner sued Washington Rep. Jim McDermott for leaking to The New York Times the embarrassing tape of a phone conversation between House Republican leaders.

House Speaker John Boehner: He once sued Washington Congressman Jim McDermott — and won. He is now suing President Obama.

The legal back-and-forth lasted from 1998 to 2007, and Boehner won. It signaled the coming of an age of acrimony to a once-collegial Congress.

Boehner and House Republicans are now embarking on new litigation, suing President Obama for his “unilateral decision” to delay implementing the employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act.

McDermott is laying into the House speaker.

“John Boehner’s speakership has been an unmitigated failure,” said the Seattle congressman. “He’s done absolutely nothing to help a veteran just home from Afghanistan find a job; nothing to make college for affordable for a bright-eyed immigrant’s son; nothing to help families in need realize their share of the American dream.”

Instead of suing the White House, McDermott argued, Boehner should get about such urgent business as extending the Highway Trust Fund and renewing the Export Import Bank.

McDermott paid dearly in his previous tussle with Boehner.

McD was ranking Democrat on the House Ethics Committee. A Florida couple, scanning a police radio, accidentally picked up and illegally recorded a conversation between Boehner and other House Republican leaders.

The GOP kingpins were discussing how to “spin” settlement of an Ethics Committee complaint against Newt Gingrich in which the then-House Speaker agreed to pay a $300,000 fine. A provision of the settlement had been that the Republicans would not engage in spin.

Boehner accused McDermott of invading his privacy.

The case bounced up and down the federal court system until the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C., settled it in Boehner’s favor. McDermott was told to pay $60,000 to Boehner, and made to absorb $1 million in Boehner’s legal fees. Ex-President Bill Clinton helped raise money for McDermott’s legal fund.

McDermott, a longtime champion of health care reform, is now laying into Boehner.

“Winston Churchill once said, ‘Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else,’ ” McD said. “Then again, Churchill never met John Boehner and the Republican members of the Tea Party Congress.